History of the Peloponnesian War

From thence going to that part of Laconia which is over against the island Cythera, where there is a temple of Apollo, they wasted a part of the country and fortified an isthmus there, both that the Helotes might have a refuge in it running away from the Lacedaemonians and that freebooters from thence, as from Pylus, might fetch in prizes from the territory adjoining.

As soon as the place was taken in, Demosthenes himself went on to Corcyra, to take up the confederates there, with intent to go thence speedily into Sicily. And Charicles, having stayed to finish and put a garrison into the fortification, went afterwards with his thirty galleys to Athens; and the Argives also went home.

The same winter also came to Athens a thousand and three hundred targetiers, of those called Machaerophori of the race of them that are called Dii, and were to have gone with Demosthenes into Sicily.

But coming too late, the Athenians resolved to send them back again into Thrace, as being too chargeable a matter to entertain them only for the war in Deceleia; for their pay was to have been a drachma a man by the day.

For Deceleia, being this summer fortified first by the whole army and then by the several cities maintained with a garrison by turns, much endamaged the Athenians and weakened their estate, both by destroying their commodities and consuming of their men, so as nothing more.